Summary and Analysis of The American Dream

The American Dream by Edward Albee, is a typical story about an absurdly average American family. This family is completely average in every way possible, standard of living, social status, etc.  This story starts off with the average family, that aren't even given names but are simply called mommy and daddy living with grandma, who appears to be losing her mind. She brings in lots and lots of boxes that mommy and daddy are not aware of what they are exactly nor do they have the attention span, or focus ability to find out. The story progresses with a series of essential meaningless conversations, about basically nothing. However, we do learn some insight into the characters of mommy and daddy through these introducing conversations. We learn that daddy is essentially immasculated mostly due to how mommy treats him and we learn that mommy is very needy and does very little thinking for herself.
"WHAT a masculine Daddy! Isn't he a masculine Daddy?" This type of quote perfectly describes mommy and daddy relationship together.
She has thoughts of her own but when higher authority figures like Mrs Barker tell her something, she automatically takes her word for everything she says. They start of having these conversations while waiting for something, although they soon forget what exactly it is that they are waiting for until the Mrs. Barker finally comes. Then they have an absurd conversation about why exactly they called Mrs. Barker here in the first place, because they seem to have forgotten. Finally the truth is revealed. It seems that mommy and daddy have had a child in the past, that they ended up killing brutally due to his inappropriate actions, and they have decided to adopt another child and therefore called Mrs. Barker. Meanwhile, grandma meets the young man who seems to be the long lost twin of the murdered baby. The murdering of the twin seems to have damaged the young man so that he is considered damaged goods.
"I no longer have the capacity to feel anything. I have no emotions. I have been drained, torn asunder disemboweled. I have, now, only my person, my body, my face. I use what I have I let people love me I accept the syntax around me, for while I know I cannot relate;I know I must be related to." 
This quote is the exact explanation of how the young man has been changed. In addition, mommy constantly talks about satisfaction and how she is never satisfied. This can be interpreted in many ways. It can be sexually since clearly daddy has lost his manhood and cannot please mommy. This can also be interpreted in terms of social status and things of that nature. Daddy always talks about wanting to achieve all these goals of running for a public office and things of that nature and yet he never actually takes any action.
Essentially, overall, this play is the typical thought of the American dream completely failed. This tells us that the American dream is either unattainable or is a very unrealistic goal. Mommy and daddy fail at achieving the American dream in every way imaginable and so that tells us that the American dream is precisely that, a dream, and that while its something to shoot for, it is never actually attainable.
The author does a great job of getting this idea across, this is seen simply even with the character names. By purposely keeping the character's names ambiguous, this shows us that this could potentially be any American family, and that this story applies to all. That many pursue the American dream and yet no one actually succeeds.